


The Better Part of Valor

by Ganger (Aiffe)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gen, Gen Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-07
Updated: 2011-06-07
Packaged: 2017-11-07 21:15:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/435535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aiffe/pseuds/Ganger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem with nights is you're alone with just yourself and the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Better Part of Valor

**Author's Note:**

> For [who-contest](http://who-contest.livejournal.com/) on LJ. Theme was "Night."

Lately, Victoria Waterfield is afraid of the dark.  
  
And it isn’t just that every creak of the old house or rustle of leaves makes her think of cybermats or long, noxious tendrils reaching from the abyss in the sea, though she’d been quite happily ignorant of those horrors before she met the Doctor.  
  
It’s that after the bustle of the day has died down, the weight of everything she’s lost weighs on her. Her father. Her home. She tries to keep her chin up and not show weakness, but when she’s alone the façade drops.  
  
She misses the Doctor and Jamie, too, and she fears for them. There were days when, if it hadn’t been for her, they would have met an awful fate. And maybe, despite all the bravery she’s shown, they think her a coward for leaving. That’s almost unbearable, because she knows how much they value courage. But she lets them think less of her, because her real fear is too terrible to be voiced. She’d been afraid that one day she wouldn’t be enough, and the Doctor’s luck would run out.  
  
Victoria had known that day was coming. It comes for all brave fools. She just doesn’t want to see it. She doesn’t want to think of the day the Doctor and Jamie are parted by the only thing strong enough to part them, or imagine that kindly old face in pain. She doesn’t want to picture the TARDIS collecting moss the day no one comes back.  
  
But every night, there those images are, along with the ones of her father killed by Daleks, her house burning, all the pain and loss she’s seen in her travels. She left all that, deliberately, for a new and peaceful life. She’d thought that leaving would be enough.


End file.
